Oral mite anaphylaxis by Thyreophagus entomophagus in a child: a case report

Sensitization to Thyreophagus entomophagus, a storage mite, is uncommon and might produce occupational respiratory disorders in farmers. We present the first case of a child suffering anaphylaxis produced by ingestion of contaminated flour with Thyreophagus entomophagus.     

CML9, an Arabidopsis calmodulin-like protein, contributes to plant innate immunity through a flagellin-dependent signalling pathway

Many stimuli such as hormones and elicitors induce changes in intracellular calcium levels to integrate information and activate appropriate responses. The Ca²⁺ signals are perceived by various Ca²⁺ sensors, and calmodulin (CaM) is one of the best characterized in eukaryotes. Calmodulin‐like (CML) proteins extend the Ca²⁺ toolkit in plants; they share sequence similarity with the ubiquitous and highly conserved CaM but their roles at physiological and molecular levels are largely unknown. Knowledge of the contribution of Ca²⁺ decoding proteins to plant immunity is emerging, and we report here data on Arabidopsis thaliana CML9, whose expression is rapidly induced by phytopathogenic bacteria, flagellin and salicylic acid. Using a reverse genetic approach, we present evidence that CML9 is involved in plant defence by modulating responses to bacterial strains of Pseudomonas syringae. Compared to wild‐type plants, the later responses normally observed upon flagellin application are altered in knockout mutants and over‐expressing transgenic lines. Collectively, using PAMP treatment and P. syringae strains, we have established that CML9 participates in plant innate immunity.     

Apertural System and Exine Stratification in Thesium Divaricatum (Santalaceae)

The type and position of the particular apertural system in Thesium divaricatum has been discussed. The study of the exine stratification shows a discontinous endexine that can be explained by the harmomegathic efficiency hypothesis to accomodate volume changes, caused by climatic variation.     

A beta‐binomial mixed‐effects model approach for analysing longitudinal discrete and bounded outcomes

Patient‐reported outcomes (PROs) are currently being increasingly used as primary outcome measures in observational and experimental studies since they inform clinicians and researchers about the health‐status of patients and generate data to facilitate improved care. PROs usually appear as discrete and bounded with U, J, or inverse J shapes, and hence, exponential family members offer inadequate distributional fits. The beta‐binomial distribution has been proposed in the literature to fit PROs. However, the fact that the beta‐binomial distribution does not belong to the exponential family limits its applicability in the regression model context, and classical estimation approaches are not straightforward. Moreover, PROs are usually measured in a longitudinal framework in which individuals are followed up for a certain period. Hence, each individual obtains several scores of the PRO over time, which leads to the repeated measures and defines the correlation structure in the data. In this work, we have developed and proposed an estimation procedure for the analysis of correlated discrete and bounded outcomes, particularly PROs, by a beta‐binomial mixed‐effects model. Additionally, we have implemented the methodology in the PROreg package in R. Because there are similar approaches in the literature to address the same issue, this work also incorporates a comparison study between our proposal and alternative methodologies commonly implemented in R and shows the superior performance of our estimation procedure. This paper was motivated by the analysis of the health‐status of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, where the main objective is the assessment of risk factors that may affect the evolution of the disease. The application of the proposed approach in the study leads to clinically relevant results.     

Short-term impact of dry olive mill residue addition to soil on the resident microbiota

The short-term response of the resident soil bacterial and fungal communities to the addition of 5% (w/w) of either dry olive mill residue (DOR), DOR treated with Phlebia sp. (PTDOR) or DOR previously extracted with water (WEDOR) was investigated. As opposed to bacteria, the diversity of fungi increased upon the amendments as assessed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of 18S rDNA. Over the first 30 days, phospholipid fatty acids analyses indicated a gradual decrease in the relative abundances of Gram⁺ bacteria (from 44.8% to 37.9%) and a concomitant increase of Gram⁻ bacteria (from 37.3% to 51.2%) in DOR-amended soil. A considerable increase in the fungal/bacterial ratio was observed after 7 days in DOR, WEDOR and PTDOR-amended soils with respect to the control (0.316, 0.165 and 0.265, respectively, vs. 0.011). The overall microbial activity was stimulated by the amendments as indicated by the higher activity levels of both dehydrogenase and fluorescein diacetate hydrolase. These results indicate that DOR at the application level examined is not toxic on soil microorganisms.     

Characteristics and outcomes of advanced melanoma patients with complete response and elective discontinuation of first-line anti-programmed death-1 monotherapy: A real-world multicentre observational cohort study

Anti-programmed death-1 (anti-PD1) treatment has significantly improved outcomes of advanced melanoma with a considerable percentage of patients achieving complete response (CR). This real-world study analyzed the feasibility of elective anti-PD1 discontinuation in advanced melanoma patients with CR and evaluated factors related to sustained response. Thirty-five patients with advanced cutaneous or primary unknown melanoma with CR to nivolumab or pembrolizumab from 11 centers were included. Mean age was 66.5 years, and 97.1% had ECOG PS 0–1. 28.6% had ≥3 metastatic sites with 58.8% having M1a-M1b disease; 8.6% had liver and 5.7% had brain metastases. At baseline, 80% had normal LDH, and 85.7% had a neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio ≤3. 74.3% of patients had CR confirmed in PET-CT. Median duration of anti-PD1 was 23.4 months (range 1.3–50.5). 24 months after therapy discontinuation, 91.9% of patients were progression-free. Estimated PFS and OS at 36, 48, and 60 months from the start of anti-PD1 were 94.2%, 89.9%, 84.3%, and 97.1%, 93.3%, 93.3%, respectively. Antibiotics use after anti-PD1 discontinuation increased the odds of progression (OR 16.53 [95% CI 1.7, 226.03]). The study confirms the feasibility of elective anti-PD1 discontinuation in advanced melanoma patients with CR and favorable prognostic factors at baseline.     

Electrophoretic mobility of N- and C-terminal monoferric fragments of bovine transferrin phenotypes AA,D1D1, D2D2, and EE,and N-terminal amino acid sequences

Iron-saturated bovine transferrins A, D1, D2, and E were cleaved by trypsin yielding monoferric fragments. The N-terminal fragments (F) of transferrins A and D2 had identical mobility in cellulose acetate electrophoresis, that of transferrin D1 a slower mobility, and that of E a still slower mobility. The C-terminal fragments (S) gave multiple bands which were essentially identical in the case of transferrins A, D1, and E, but of slower mobility in the case of transferrin D2. All four variants had identical N-terminal amino acid sequences. The electrophoretic mobility of the C-terminal fragments was reduced by neuraminidase treatment, but the N-terminal fragments were unaffected. The four transferrin variants therefore appear to be made up from three electrophoretically distinguishable N-terminal halves and two C-terminal halves. The feature responsible for the electrophoretic double banding of homozygous bovine asialotransferrins is consistently associated with the C-terminal half of the molecule.     

An autonomously replicating plasmid transforms Botrytis cinerea to phleomycin resistance

Abstract A transformation system has been developed for the pathogen fungus Botrytis cinerea , based on the utilization of the wide host plasmid pUT737 that contains the Sh ble gene, conferring resistance to phleomycin. Transformed protoplasts were regenerated at 10–25 μg ml⁻¹ of phleomycin, at a frequency of 25–40 transformants per μg of DNA, and they were resistant up to 50 μg ml⁻¹. Southern hybridization using undigested and digested total DNA showed the presence of circular autonomously replicating plasmid pUT737 in the transformants. Reisolated plasmid from transformed fungus transformed E. coli and rescued plasmid was identified as pUT737. Transformants were grown for four generations under non-selective conditions and replicative plasmids were still detected. Plasmids present in all transformants at this stage had been modified from native pUT737 and showed the same size and configuration indicating that selection through stabilizing plasmid forms has happened.